In geometry/topology, there are (at least) three specialized journals that end up publishing a large fraction of the best papers in the subject -- Geometry and Topology, JDG, and GAFA.

What journals play a similar role in other subjects?

Let me be more specific. Suppose that I'm an analyst (or a representation theorist, or a number theorist, etc.) and I've written a paper that I judge as being not quite good enough for a top journal like the Annals or Inventiones or Duke, but still very good. If I want to be ambitious, where would I submit it?

Since the answer will depend on the subject, I marked this "community wiki".

Andy --- since there's not an answer yet, I'd suggest you ask a more specific question. What field do you care about most? Just ask that for now.
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Scott Morrison♦Oct 31 '09 at 6:17

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The Australian Research Council has rated essentially all mathematics journals against others in their area. Thumbing through the rankings, I find that the generally agree with my perceptions of the journals I know something about. (One annoying point: I can't find anywhere on the ARC website a key explaining what the letter rankings A*, A, B or C mean, apart from A* being best and C worst.) You can find the rankings here: arc.gov.au/era/era_journal_list.htm
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Dan RamrasApr 25 '11 at 22:33

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@Dan: As far as I know (though I now can't seem to find this on the ARC's web site), A* means top 5%, A the next 15%, B the next 30% and C the bottom half (this breakdown refers to the number of journals and doesn't seem to take into account other factors such as the amount of pages or papers published by various journals... e.g. it is conceivable that only 3.5% of published mathematics is published via the 5% of journals ranked A*). Some explanation of the categories A* thru C can be found at arc.gov.au/era/tiers_ranking.htm
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Philip BrookerApr 26 '11 at 8:08

Philip, that link at the end is what I've been looking for. I'd seen it paraphrased elsewhere, but couldn't find an authoritative source. Thanks.
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Dan RamrasApr 28 '11 at 4:15

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@BenoîtKloeckner : They have great ambitions, but I think that at this point they have not reached them (and who knows what will happen when they start charging authors to publish in them).
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Andy PutmanAug 31 '14 at 21:23

but I don't have any personal experience with the journals listed there but not above.

Moreover, I think 1) is clearly the best (a very good journal), then 2)-5) are of roughly similar quality (all quite solid), then 6) and 7) have some nice papers and also some papers which I find not so interesting, novel and/or correct; I have not seen an interesting paper published in 8).

But I don't think that even 1) is as prestigious as the top subject journals in certain other areas, e.g. JDG or GAFA. There are some other excellent journals which, although not subject area journals, seem to be rather partial to number theory, e.g. Crelle, Math. Annalen, Compositio Math.

Finally, as far as analytic and combinatorial number theory goes, I think 4) and 5) should be reversed. (Were I an analytic number theorist, this would have caused me to rank 5) higher than 4) overall.)

Combinatorics: In my opinion, Discrete Mathematics is only a mediocre journal (I wouldn't consider this top journal). Yes, it contains good papers, but it contains a lot of papers... on average... it's average.

Some other ones worth a mention (on top of JCTA, JACO and EJoC mentioned earlier): Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B, Journal of Combinatorial Designs, Annals of Combinatorics, Combinatorica.

The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics should probably go on the top list in combinatorics, but since it's a free, open access journal, it's usually assumed to be worse than it actually is.

Combinatorics, Probability, and Computing, the Journal of Graph Theory and the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics seem to be widely regarded as excellent journals, at the level of the ones mentioned above (except Discrete Mathematics).

I would appreciate if someone is able to comment on (and compare the above journals to) the following journals: "Combinatorics, Probability, and Computing", "Journal of Combinatorics", and "Journal of Graph Theory".
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Derrick StoleeApr 27 '11 at 18:46

Num Math and Math Comp are more generalist; SIAM has several journals with different scopes, but all of them rank among the top ones. In particular, SIAM Review, which mostly publishes reviews and article of interest to a broad range of researchers, and has an impressive impact factor.
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Federico PoloniAug 8 '14 at 20:33

I would definitely disagree that DM is a top journal in discrete math, but maybe the picture is slightly different for enumerative combinatorics.
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Andrew D. KingOct 20 '10 at 20:53

In my uninformed opinion, DM, Elec JC and Euro JC are considered lesser than JCTA and JACO. But that's part of the problem with this sort of subjective question. I think one way and Anna thinks another; I have no way to know who is right.
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David SpeyerOct 20 '10 at 22:25

In mathematical physics, Communications in Mathematical Physics is among the top journals I guess.

There are two other journals I would consider to be above average: Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics and the Journal of High Energy Physics, which publish lots of high-quality mathematical physics papers, especially at the formal end of hep-th. Of course, I have heard if mentioned in the past that, especially in US maths departments where they care about this sort of things, Communications is considered a mathematics journal, whereas JHEP perhaps is not, the jury still being out on ATMP. Hence if you are a mathematician thinking of publishing a good paper in mathematical physics and want to publish in what potential employers might consider (however narrow-minded this consideration might be) a mathematics journal, then perhaps Communications is the way to go. The quality of papers there is consistently above average.

For algebraic geometry, I would think that Journal of Algebraic Geometry is the top specialized journal. However, there are many excellent journals that are nominally in a different (neighboring) field, which accept algebraic geometry submissions (and have algebraic geometers, or people interested in algebraic geometry, in the editorial board). Examples include:

JDG

Geom. & Topol.

Algebra & Number Theory

J Topology.

(Of course, there are also many other non-specialized journals that are suitable for an article that is almost Inventiones- or Duke-level.)

In ergodic theory and dynamical systems the top specialized journal is... well, Ergodic Theory & Dynamical Systems. By a country mile. I don't think any other journal in this area deserves to be mentioned here.

I agree with you about the Journal of Algebra. Still, it is pretty good. A collaborator of mine submitted a paper to the Journal of Number Theory and it got accepted by the Journal of Algebra. After making inquiries, he decided he was trading up and let it stand! Also, not a very exciting response, but Algebra and Number Theory is also a very good subject area journal for algebra (maybe the best?).
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Pete L. ClarkDec 28 '09 at 11:45

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Pete, how come your friend submitted to both journals? I thought it is not allowed? Could you explain further, this sounds interesting.
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Hailong DaoDec 28 '09 at 15:08

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@Hailong: A very belated reply...I didn't say that he submitted to both journals. I said he submitted to JNT and it got accepted by JoA. No, he doesn't understand how this could have happened either. (I should say that I of course did not check up on the story; if you want to decide that the most likely explanation is that he actually mistakenly submitted to JoA in the first place, go ahead. I think I believe him, but in part because it's much funnier that way.)
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Pete L. ClarkApr 25 '11 at 23:11

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@Pete L. Clark and Hailong Dao: I firmly believe that I once read somewhere (but cannot recall or find where) of an option for the referee to suggest a transfer of a paper to a journal that seems a thematically better fit (among the/some journals of the same publisher). Indeed, the place where I read this might well be Elsevier-related (JNT and JoA are both Elsevier journals).
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quidApr 27 '11 at 18:48

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Other journals in algebra with a general scope include Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, Journal of Algebra and its Applications, and Communications in Algebra; it seems in general there reputation is somewhat below that of Journal of Algebra, yet they are still considered as good/solid journals in algebra.
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quidFeb 10 '12 at 20:00

In probability, The Annals of Probability is certainly leading the field, probably along Probability Theory and Related Fields.

In fact, the leadership of The Annals of Probability is so strong that many probabilists seem to not even think of top generalist journal when they have a top result, and simply submit to The Annals of Probability papers that would have a shot at Inventiones and the like. At least, it is what some papers there made me think.

As noted by Martin Hairer, there are several other probability journals that are high level, though less universally considered on top of the field: Electronic Journal of/Communications in Probability (which is remarkable by being free for the authors as well as open for readers) and Annales de l'IHP: Probabilités et statistiques.

I don't think anyone who works in the field would dispute the relative rankings of DCG, CGTA, and IJCGA.

JoCG is another story. It's a relatively new open-access journal, established in 2009. I place it second here because I think that's a fair estimate of how good a paper has to be in order to get accepted in JoCG. If you measure quality in other ways, you may rate it differently.

In PDE and related analysis, there are a lot of good journal, among which the recent Analysis and PDE (by MSP, the publishers of Geometry & Topology) and the much older Archive for Rational mechanics and Analysis seem to stand on top. Also noticeable are Annales de l'IHP - analyse non linéaire, Communication on PDE, SIAM journal on mathematical analysis, and certainly other that I forget.

The original question is about the standing of the journals. I may be wrong, but I feel GAFA has `usurped' the place at top of the functional analysts' table that JFA once held. But I speak from very limited experience here.
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Yemon ChoiOct 31 '09 at 21:33

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Yemon: you are right about the question. But the comparison of JFA and GAFA depends heavily on your research interest...
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András BátkaiApr 25 '11 at 22:43